


Love is a Polaroid

by but_i_am_a_villain



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Lyric Inspired, hippolyta musing about her daughter's relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 10:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16721466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_i_am_a_villain/pseuds/but_i_am_a_villain
Summary: Hippolyta comes across a stack of photographs on Diana's vanity and finds herself pondering the nature of her daughter's relationship.





	Love is a Polaroid

_Love is a polaroid_

_Better in pictures_

_Never can fill the void_

* * *

 

Hippolyta was rummaging through Diana’s things when she found them; she’d been looking for her comb, the golden one she used to try in vain to tug through Diana’s curls when she was a child and the one that her daughter had usurped that morning, but instead she passed by the vanity and saw them, the stack of photos.

It wasn’t long ago that Diana had returned from the world of man with the mysterious little device that captured the images, and it hadn’t been long before that that she returned with a guest. Hippolyta stilled remembered the day the boat bumped against the shoreline, marking the return of her daughter as a gift from the gods. She thought her princess would return alone and had greeted her as such, pulling her in for a hug, desperately clutching her as though to remember that she was alive, that she was unharmed, when a voice tugged her from the moment.

_Mother…_ and it was Diana’s voice, but new. Different. Not as unsteady as it had been before, more certain, perhaps a little more tired. _This is Isabel. She needs our help._

And suddenly they were not alone anymore. There had been a figure in the boat, small and unwelcoming, a presence that changed everything. _Isabel,_ she remembered thinking to herself, _who is Isabel?_

Diana had answered her question well enough. A chemist, a war criminal, a fugitive. Hippolyta had found the handcuffs used for transport in the boat not even an hour after their arrival; her hands burned at their touch, and she had thrown them into the ocean moments later. She had asked Diana about them that night, and the next night, and the following night again for weeks, wanting answers as to _why_ and _how_ and _who_ this mysterious woman had killed, and what brought her here now. Weeks later she asked why Diana chose to protect her. Months later she asked what Diana saw in her. Years later she asked how long the two had shared a bed.

Yet again, Diana answered well enough.

That had been forty years ago. When Diana brought things home from man’s world now, the queen’s questions were not so pressing. But when her daughter brought home the photograph device, the camera, she couldn’t help her curiosity.

_What is it?_ She asked, turning the box over and over in her hands, _What does it do?_

_It captures memories,_ Diana enthused, _a camera! It takes photographs, let me show you._

There was a click, a whirr, and then a photograph, an image of herself frozen in time forever. Hippolyta remembered staring at it as it appeared like a contorted reflection, her eyes wide and her mind suddenly alert.

_...and what does the photograph do?_

_...it holds the moment, so you can look at it later. No matter what happens now, this photo is always here!_

And so it was. That image of herself was the first photo on the pile, the one that captured her attention. She smiled as she held it in her hand, and though she had every intention to set the photo back down and leave, the remaining photos caught her eye.

There was one of Menalippe, standing on the cliffs by the sea. One of Penelope lounging with her feet in a fountain. One of Artemis, the lines blurred with the motion of her on the training grounds. All of these Hippolyta had seen before.

The one she hadn’t rested at the bottom of the stack. It puzzled her, perhaps even made her nervous, and she knew she ought to set it down and pretend as though she had never seen it but she _couldn’t._ She was glued to it, a simple yet daunting little image.

It was Isabel, standing in what Hippolyta instantly recognized as Diana’s bedroom, facing the balcony away from the bed, her arms loosely crossed and her head bowed. She was dressed in nothing but a silk robe, the faint light visible in the photo revealing her state of undress underneath. Her hair, usually meticulously tucked up and away from her face, hung loosely over her shoulders and down her back, and her scars that were so often covered with scarves or masks or hands caught the shadows cast by the balcony door, visible and unmarred.

A captured memory. So what was this a memory _of?_

The bedroom in the background suggested something intimate. Perhaps this was an early morning, one where Diana had left the camera beside her bed and had picked it up just as Isabel went to open the curtains. Perhaps the robe was borrowed from the back of a vanity chair, belonging not to the chemist herself but to the woman still wrapped in furs, sprawled out against the sheets and pillows of the bed where love making had happened the night before. Perhaps Diana had spent the early morning running her fingers through Isabel’s hair, smoothing it out while her own remained tussled. Perhaps Isabel had every intention of returning to bed and giving herself up once again to a young goddess, sharing power and love and passion on a warm morning in the realm of Paradise.

But Isabel’s stance suggested something secret. Her arms crossed, her eyes closed, her head bowed, all signs that she was distancing herself. Perhaps this was not a moment of passion, but one of anger. Perhaps Diana had chosen to capture an instance of tired argument or simmering rage in an effort to remind herself how to curb it. Hippolyta had so often worried about such an occurrence that she brought it up more than once in her early questioning of Isabel, much to Diana’s dismay.

_A woman from man’s world is no different than a man himself,_ she’d argued, _her heart has been tainted. She will not understand you, how can you know her intentions?_

_Because she has changed, Mother! She has suffered at the hands of men too, she’s looking to be better--_

_Because ‘being better’ kept her from being killed. How can you trust her? After what her kind did? Her armies--_

_They were not her armies!_

_\-- killed your family. How can you be sure her hatred will not get the best of her? How can we be sure she will not do it again?_

She didn’t remember Diana’s response. All she recalled was the fighting, the bickering back and forth until they each got frustrated enough to fall into silence. She hated to speak with her daughter that way, but her worries bubbled over and it could not be helped. Isabel existed for so long in her mind as a stranger, as a _threat,_ it was hard not to be at least a little concerned.

But there was a crook of a smile on the chemist’s frozen face, revealed only by the unscarred portion of her top lip. It curled just enough to shake Hippolyta from her thoughts, and with something of a defeated sigh she resigned from her own internal argument. No, this was not a fight, or useless bickering, or even so much as a moment of discontent.

Isabel may be stubborn, crass, and at times a sadistic arse, but she had long since grown out of being _cruel._ If she and Diana took up arms against one another, it was over something mundane, like who had eaten the last of the ice cream, or when the last time Diana had bathed was. But that was not what the little frame captured.

Perhaps this photo was an accident; perhaps the camera had been in Diana’s hands, meant to be aimed at the doorway but snapped too soon. Perhaps the photo was one of many, a collection of detailed portraits of the two of them. Perhaps there was a matching one of Diana hidden away in Isabel’s things. Perhaps there were many more to be taken.

Or perhaps it was none of the above.

The angle of Isabel’s head, the tilt in her smile, the slump in her shoulders, all suggested a moment of peace. She was undisturbed by the camera and its presence, and Hippolyta found herself wondering if the little woman had known she was being photographed at all. All the better if not; Diana would have wanted her in as natural a state as possible, undisturbed and unburdened by the world around her. Then Isabel would be free to look as blissful as possible, and _that,_ the queen realized, was exactly what she was.

Held in place by a single polaroid, she was at ease, _happy,_ and if that is what Diana wanted to frame forever, she had done so out of love for the sight itself. That alone is what the photo represented: an unabashed, untainted illustration of love. Unspoken desire between goddess and mortal, between Amazon and woman, between _Diana_ and _Isabel_.

A captured memory. A frozen moment. No matter what happened now, Hippolyta knew that single instance of love would always be there, pulled out of time and space and stored in a photograph.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Imagine Dragons song, Polaroid! Thanks again to shakenspeares for the quick beta! 
> 
> I love these characters so much but never get the time to write anything for them...so here's just something quick! Thank you to everyone who took the time to read!!


End file.
